You know, usually when we walk into a museum,
we expect this very, very clear division of time
and space. Right. Yeah. Like the eras are separated.
Exactly. The contemporary art is in that like
bright, airy new wing. And then the historical
artifacts are kept safely behind thick glass
down in the dimly lit basement somewhere. Right.
We really expect things to be neatly categorized.
Yeah. You don't just walk into the lobby and
see a brand new wildly abstract sculpture sitting
on the exact same pedestal as a, I don't know,
a 50 -year -old restored artifact? No, definitely
not. And with the artist standing right there
telling you you have to look at both of them
simultaneously to understand either one. Right,
because it just completely shatters that comfortable
linear timeline that we like to rely on. Yeah.
Viewing art or history that way, it forces you
to see the active, ongoing conversation happening
between completely different eras. And that beautifully
complicated sort of era landscape is the exact
territory we are exploring today. We're doing
a deep dive into Joe Lovano's 2006 jazz album,
Streams of Expression. It's such a perfect example
of this. It really is. We're looking at this
because it's a fascinating case study in how
creative masters balance honoring the history
of their field with forging their own completely
new path. Yeah, I mean, we are really looking
at a master class in synthesis here. For you
listening, if you're trying to understand why
certain artistic or professional choices are
made and how someone takes multiple eras of complex
information and turns them into one cohesive
statement, this album is basically the blueprint.
To set the scene a bit. Reaching your 20th studio
album on a legendary label like Blue Note. That
is a milestone that very few artists ever see.
Oh, absolutely. It's rare air. Right. And Lovano
used that platform to deliver this sprawling
epic that clocks in at, let me check, one hour.
13 minutes and 54 seconds. It's massive. So,
okay, let's unpack this. We're going to examine
the ambitious architecture of this album, the
deeply historical roots it relies on, the completely
divided critical reception it provoked, and the
massive web of jazz history brought into the
studio by the personnel. And honestly, the timeline
of the album's creation is the first indicator
of just how ambitious this project actually is.
Oh, definitely. The sheer physical reality of
building this record provides the context for
pretty much everything else we are going to discuss.
Yeah, because the recording process here is a
massive departure from how most modern music
is made. Right. This entire hour plus of complex
music was recorded over just two days, December
13th and 14th, 2005, at Avatar Studios in New
York City. Which is wild to think about. I mean,
producing over 73 minutes of finalized, intricately
arranged music in 48 hours That requires an intense
logistical and artistic sprint. It really does
because, you know, in a lot of modern recording,
even back in 2005, artists had the luxury of
tracking instruments one by one. Right. Using
isolation booths and all that. Exactly. Spending
weeks editing or fixing mistakes digitally. But
tackling a massive acoustic ensemble project
in two days means you are recording live in the
room. Just everyone together. Yeah. It requires
immense level of fluency from every single musician
involved. The technical proficiency has to be
so deeply ingrained that they don't even have
to think about the notes. They just play. Right.
They only have to think about the expression.
Deep, rigorous preparation is literally the only
thing that allows for that kind of spontaneous
fluid execution under that much pressure. And
the track list reveals just how much structure
they had to navigate in those two days. The album
rests on basically three distinct structural
pillars. Right, the architecture. Yeah, so the
first pillar is the completely original five
-part streams of expression suite. Which is just
incredible on its own. Yeah, this features movements
titled streams, cool, enchantment, second nature,
and the fire prophets. And that is really the
forward -looking component of the record. It
is a newly commissioned work operating as a continuous
thematic narrative rather than just, you know,
five random songs placed next to each other.
Right. Then the second pillar is a three -part
suite dedicated entirely to the birth of the
cool. The historical anchor. Exactly. And surrounding
those two massive suites, the third pillar consists
of three standalone works. You've got blue sketches.
Big Ben and a track called Buckeyes. Oh, Buckeyes
is a beast. Yeah, it actually takes up a massive
piece of real estate on its own. It comes in
at nine and a half minutes, making the longest
individual track on the whole album. Which brings
us right back to that architecture of museum
analogy. It is a highly deliberate layout. Right.
You have the wing dedicated to newly commissioned
modern art, which is Lovano's original five part
suite. Yeah. Then you walk down the hall into
the historical wing, displaying the carefully
restored artifacts. That's the birth of the cool
suite. Beautifully put. And scattered around
the lobby to sort of tie the whole building together.
You have those standalone sculptures. the shorter
tracks like Blue Sketches and Buckeyes. And moving
from that modern art wing into the historical
wing is where the project takes a major philosophical
risk. How so? Well, dedicating a massive chunk
of a 20th anniversary milestone album to another
artist's past is just a really unexpected structural
choice. Yeah, let's examine that historical wing
because the birth of the cool suite utilizes
melodic themes inspired directly by Miles Davis's
iconic 1948 and 1950 nonet. Right. The tracks
are arranged as these dense medleys. You have
Prelude Moon Dreams, then a massive eight -minute
block of interlude number one, move interlude
number two, and finally, publicity parslew. Such
heavy arrangements. And the sources also note
a crucial detail here. This specific suite was
conducted by Gunther Schuller. Which is huge.
A nonet is a nine -piece band, and it is a notoriously
difficult format to write and arrange for. I
can imagine. Yeah, with nine pieces, usually
a rhythm section paired with a heavy layered
horn section like French horns and tubas. You
are trying to harness the dense sweeping power
of a full orchestra. But with way fewer people.
Exactly. But you still have to maintain the agility
and the improvisational freedom of a small jazz
club combo. It is a really precarious balancing
act. OK, I have to challenge the overarching
premise of this choice, though. Go for it. If
Joe Lovano is celebrating his 20th album for
Blue Note, a moment that really should be the
ultimate showcase of his own singular voice,
why hand over a massive percentage of the runtime
to someone else's 50 -year -old music? That's
the big question. Right. From a listener's perspective,
playing classic Miles Davis coons in 2006 feels
almost like a commercial safety net. It guarantees
a certain level of built -in audience familiarity.
Doesn't that risk turning a milestone solo project
into just a high -end tribute act? That's a fair
point, but the involvement of Gunther Schuller
is actually the mechanism that prevents this
from becoming a tribute act. Really? How so?
Well, having a conductor in a jazz session is
an anomaly. Jazz is largely built on nonverbal
communication. Right, like a nod or eye contact.
Yeah, a breath, eye contact across the room.
Bringing in a conductor means the music is so
architecturally demanding, so densely layered,
that the ensemble literally requires a focal
point to navigate the score. Oh, wow. I hadn't
thought about it like that. Yeah, Shuler's presence
signals that this is a rigorous intellectual
inquiry, not just a casual walk down memory lane.
Livano is demonstrating that reaching a level
of mastery doesn't mean you graduate out of the
history. You don't just leave it behind. No,
you enter into a more complex, active conversation
with it. He is taking the foundational texts
of the genre and proving he can integrate them
seamlessly into his own contemporary vision.
But taking that kind of historical risk in a
modern studio and environment, is exactly what
fractured the critical response when the album
was released. Oh, completely. The sources give
us two very distinct, almost contradictory perspectives
on whether this experiment actually worked. And,
you know, a deep split in critical reception
usually indicates that a piece of art is challenging
the standard rubrics we use to evaluate media.
Yeah, so on one side we have Steve Greenlee writing
for Jazz Times. He approached the album with
a fair amount of skepticism, calling it a sequel
to Lovano's 1995 album, Rush Hour. Which is kind
of a backhanded compliment. Yeah. Greenlee noted
that the music is interesting enough, particularly
when Lovano is taking his own solos. Right. but
he was incredibly blunt about its lifespan, stating
that this is not a disc that will find itself
in his CD changer often. Ouch. Yeah, in his view,
Lovano's original suite constituted the much
better portion of the album, and the historical
explorations basically dragged the project down.
Well, Greenlee is evaluating the album through
the lens of pure utility and replayability. Right.
The CD changer test is all about immediate gratification.
He is looking for the visceral thrill of a modern
jazz solo. He wants the bright lights of the
modern art wing, and he finds the historical
museum tour tedious. Contrast that, though, with
John Fordham's review in The Guardian. Fordham
was a massive champion of the album. Total opposite
reaction. Yeah, he specifically focused on the
historical suites, stating that Lovano and Shuler
managed to avoid simply polishing the glossy
surfaces of legacy jazz. That's such a great
phrase. It is. Fordham argued that instead of
creating a static homage, the ensemble looked
backward to the genre's pre -bop roots and simultaneously
looked forward to the free jazz that those roots
eventually helped release. And polishing the
glossy surfaces is a brilliant way to describe
the danger of nostalgia. Oh, definitely. Nostalgia
tends to buff out the rough, radical edges of
history to make it more palatable for modern
audiences. Fordham is arguing that Lovano retained
the friction of the original music. Right. He
kept the grit. Exactly. And to understand Fordham's
praise, we really have to define those two eras
he mentions, pre bop and free jazz. Let's do
it. So pre bop refers to the highly arranged,
structured, often danceable music of the big
band era before musicians like Charlie Charlie
Parker shattered all the rules with bebop. And
then free jazz is the complete opposite end of
the spectrum. It is the avant -garde movement
of the 1960s that tore down traditional chordal
structures in favor of pure unbound emotional
expression. So what does this all mean? How can
an album simultaneously look backward to rigid,
arranged structures and forward to unbound chaos?
It's a paradox, right? It is. And more importantly,
how can two professional critics listen to the
exact same 73 minutes of music and walk away
with such drastically different valuations of
its worth? I think it really comes down to what
we expect from the media we consume. Greenlee
values the immediate personal expression of the
soloist. Fordham values historical synthesis.
Fordham is listening for the architectural connections
between eras. So they're just measuring different
things entirely. Exactly. And being truly well
-informed requires holding both of these perspectives
at the same time. An album can be a brilliant,
academically rigorous piece of historical synthesis,
and it can also be something that requires too
much mental bandwidth to put on repeat in your
car during a commute. That makes a lot of sense.
But, you know, to successfully execute the kind
of historical synthesis Fordham is talking about,
to build a bridge between the rigid arrangements
of pre bop and the wild frontiers of free jazz,
you cannot rely on standard studio session players.
Oh, absolutely not. You need a brain trust. You
need musicians whose own lived experiences map
the exact history of the genre you're trying
to explore. Because an ambitious concept falls
apart if the personnel in the room don't possess
the vocabulary to actually articulate it, you
need an ensemble that basically embodies the
timeline. And Lovano assembled a massive roster
to achieve this. Alongside Lovano on alto clarinet
and tenor sax, and Schuller conducting, the ensemble
features George Garzone and Ralph Lollema also
on tenor sax. Heavy hitters. Right. You have
Gary Smullian on baritone sax, Tim Hagens and
Barry Reisz on trumpet, Lewis Nash on drums,
and Dennis Erwin on bass. Such a great lineup.
But the source material provides an incredibly
detailed look at one specific member of this
brain truck. the pianist John Hicks. Yes, John
Hicks serves as the perfect case study for how
an artist's unseen resume shapes the final product
of a collaborative environment. When you examine
John Hicks' discography, the sheer weight of
his experience is staggering. It really is. He
was recording as a bandleader as early as 1975
with albums like Hell's Bells and Steadfast,
but it is his collaborative wingspan that reveals
his true value to a session like this. Oh, for
sure. In the 1960s and 70s, he was playing with
Art Blakey in the Jazz Messengers, appearing
on albums like A Smake It in 1964, and Child's
Dance in 1972. And playing with Art Blakey anchors
a musician firmly in the hard bop tradition.
Right, which is what exactly. Hard bop is defined
by heavy, driving, blues -drenched rhythms. It
is sweat on the cymbals music. I love that description.
Yeah. For a pianist like Hicks, playing in the
Jazz Messengers meant learning how to highly
percussive anchoring chords that could cut through
a really dense rhythm section. So you really
had to hit those keys. Exactly. It requires a
very specific aggressive physical approach to
the keyboard. Okay, so you take that aggressive
driving foundation and then you look further
down his resume. Yeah. By the late 70s and 80s,
Hicks is playing with Pharaoh Sanders on albums
like Journey to the One in 1979 and Rejoice in
Africa in the early 80s. Which requires an entirely
different musical vocabulary. Really? How is
it different? Well, Farrah Sanders is a pioneer
of spiritual jazz. This is expansive meditative
music that pushes deep into avant -garde tonal
boundaries. Oh, wow. Instead of punching out
heavy rhythmic chords, a pianist playing spiritual
jazz has to create floating impressionistic textures.
They are playing outside the traditional chord
changes to create a mood rather than just a beat.
That is a massive shift, and the timeline keeps
expanding. Throughout the 80s and 90s, Hicks
recorded extensively with David Murray on albums
like Sketches of Tokyo, Ming Samba, and Fast
Life. He played with Betty Carter, Chico Freeman,
and Roy Hargrove. His output from the mid -70s
straight through the early 2000s is essentially
a living map of modern jazz evolution. And this
is the critical mechanism behind how Livano's
album was recorded in just 48 hours. The muscle
memory. Exactly. When John Hicks sits down at
the piano at Avatar Studios in December 2005,
he's not just reading notes off a piece of sheet
music. He is filtering those notes through 40
years of muscle memory. He brings the percussive
drive he learned from Art Blakey and the expansive
avant -garde textures he explored with Pharaoh
Sanders directly into Livano's streams of expression.
Every chord voicing he chooses is informed by
decades of living at the absolute cutting edge
of the art form. He is basically a walking, breathing,
historical wing of the museum. That's a great
way to put it. When you fill a room with musicians
who possess resumes like John Hicks and Gunther
Schuler, the fluency is already established.
They don't need to spend weeks learning how to
communicate with each other in the studio. Right.
They only need to decide which specific conversation
they're going to have over those two days. Because
in any collaborative field, the final output
is always fundamentally shaped by the diverse,
often completely unseen histories of everyone
in the room. Yeah. You are never just getting
their time for a 48 -hour session. You are getting
the culmination of everywhere they have been
and every system they have ever worked within.
So to wrap this up, Streams of Expression is
far more than just a collection of tracks. It
is a massive structural achievement that bridges
the modern invention of Lovano's original suites
with the foundational, highly arranged history
of Miles Davis' nonet. It acts as a mirror for
our own critical expectations, forcing us to
ask whether we value immediate utility over deep
historical synthesis. And it relies entirely
on the deep lived lineage of titans like John
Hicks to execute that synthesis under the massive
pressure of a two -day recording sprint. And
for you listening right now, the underlying mechanics
of this album extend far beyond music history.
Yeah, how does this apply to, you know, our everyday
lives? Well, whether you are prepping for a boardroom
meeting, designing your product, or just trying
to master a complex new skill, this album proves
that true mastery does not mean ignoring what
came before you just to prove how innovative
you are. Right. deeply understand and actively
converse with the foundational roots of your
field. You have to understand the architecture
of the past before you can confidently improvise
and push your field into new territory. You really
have to master the rules of the museum before
you can build the new wing. Exactly. John Fordham
pointed out that this album looked back at the
rigid structures of pre bop specifically to see
the wild unbound free jazz that it eventually
helped release. Yeah. It suggests that history
always holds the seeds of future rebellion. Which
kind of leaves us with a fascinating thought.
Decades from now, when future historians look
back at the art, the business models, or the
technology being created by us today, what entirely
unpredictable future movements will they say
our current streams of expression helped release?